7-letter words with E as the 2nd letter and R as the 5th letter

The pattern is _E__R__, leaving four positions open. GENERAL, SEVERAL, FEDERAL, and CENTRAL are familiar options; HEXARCH stands out for a different reason, scoring 22 points. Only 36 matches fall among the most common English words, so the wider group includes tournament vocabulary alongside everyday entries.

At a glance: common letters and endings

• GENERAL, SEVERAL, FEDERAL, CENTRAL, and RECORDS all fit the _E__R__ pattern.
• R is the most common opening letter: 62 matches start with R, compared with 45 beginning with D.
• Ninety matches end in S, while 31 end in D; final S is the strongest ending pattern.
• Dictionary counts differ: Collins has 228 matches, NWL2023 has 183, and ENABLE has 176.
• Only 36 qualify as common under the frequency cutoff, making familiar examples a small slice.

7-letter words with E as the 2nd letter and R as the 5th letter

The R at position five makes this E-pattern much narrower than several nearby patterns. Keeping E second but changing the fifth letter to I yields 1,099 matches; fifth-position E yields 597, and A yields 465. Those comparisons point to the R constraint as the main bottleneck, not the second-position E.

Changing the second letter while keeping R fifth has a smaller effect: A produces 218 words, just below this pattern’s 230. The examples show how much the open slots can vary: GENERAL and FEDERAL share an ending, while RECORDS and REPORTS finish with S but have different first letters.

Which matching words score highest?

Among 7-letter words with E as the 2nd letter and R as the 5th letter, HEXARCH leads the scoring list at 22 points. XERARCH follows at 19, then HEJIRAS and HEXEREI at 17 each. Those choices use rarer letters than GENERAL or CENTRAL, so a familiar-looking answer is not automatically the strongest play.

Dictionary coverage is a real constraint: Collins recognizes 228 matches, compared with 176 in ENABLE and 183 in NWL2023. The pattern does not guarantee that every game accepts every entry; check your game’s word list before committing to an unfamiliar form such as HEXARCH.